The Infamous Photopia Edit Dumping Ground
Lately, I've been receiving many compliments about my custom signature work, using nothing but Photopia screenshots, clip art, and decent editing skills in GIMP. I tend to make these things when I'm bored, and these pieces are no exception. This thread is obviously a WIP, but I plan on putting everything in a Pinterest gallery once I reach the image limit for a single post. Here's what I've made so far...
The image that got me into this sort of thing after joining TBT. All I did was photoshop a GMOD version of Bob to create an avatar that mimics the artwork of Joe Walsh's 1991 album Ordinary Average Guy. I've ran with this avatar on and off randomly since.
This was one of the first things I made when I created Brucewood Mac. This is intended to be inner LP sleeve art for Antelopes Are Hard to Find (aka the paper that's intended to protect the vinyl record) with pictures of the members and the instruments each one plays. It also has somewhat of a worn design (left). The image on the right is the normal version with no added filters.
Here's the various LP's I've created so far; all are based off actual LP art. From left to right:
- Brucewood Mac's Dumbfound Deer: Loosely based off Fleetwood Mac's 1968 album Mr. Wonderful.
- Brucewood Mac's Antelopes Are Hard to Find: Based off the band photograph found on the rear of Fleetwood Mac's 1974 album Heroes Are Hard to Find.
- Brucewood Mac's Pretending: Heavily based off The Pretenders' 1980 debut album. I also made rear cover art with a tracklist, which can be viewed here.
- Katt's WASP: Based off Shaun Cassidy's 1980 album Wasp featuring Todd Rundgren's Utopia.
- The White Puppies' De Dogil: Based off The White Stripes' 2000 album De Stijl. They're also Michigan natives like me.
- Roscoe's Dark Horse: Based off the UK artwork of Thin Lizzy's 1971 debut album. I also made rear art based off the same album's original '71 LP design here.
Various banners I've made to put into my signature on TBT.
- Tom's banner is meant to mimic Smash Bros. Ultimate fighter announcements, but I couldn't make it look any better than adding text. Honestly, I think it's alright without the black paint splatters.
- Bob's is simple, and it's the first one I made that was intended to be a signature. It's not wide enough to properly fit, but maybe I'll reuse it for a short story on my journal.
- The "epic lineup" one took quite a bit of work. I took a photo of every villager (including my player character) individually in front of a green screen in Photopia, then painstakingly chroma-keyed and scaled each one to put in front of a sunset, therefore giving the impression that they're my supporting cast for an action movie. I really loved how it turned out. It could maybe see a third edit to make it look even better (this is the second; the first was off scale-wise and had different text).
- The holiday one is Brucewood Mac in a "family photo" sort of thing. It really didn't take me long to edit this; the only hard part was making the "from" text on the fireplace, believe it or not. Text arches are a pain to make manually.
- The solo Lopez banner wasn't heavily inspired by anything, though I did take some influences from both Jimmy Page's 1988 album Outrider and Jeff Beck's 1976 album Wired. For some reason, there's something about Lopez's side glare that makes me like him a whole lot more; or maybe he's just so darn cool that I wanted to show my appreciation for him further.
- The Bruce and Lopez banner is pretty much similar to the solo Lopez version, but with a few significant edits. It's kind of cool how I made them hold guitars. If only Nintendo let us do that in New Horizons...
- I wanted to make something with Sasha in it. I looked at that little Pocket Camp event that was going on featuring him, and saw that he has an aesthetic of stargazing outdoors in the wilderness. Given that I already had a wallpaper image on hand that I could use for something, the decision was made to create a banner promoting the idea of kindness within the community and beyond. It's not easy to do with everyone, but at least the mint bunny is on board.
- Yet another Bruce and Lopez banner, but with both in the same side-eye serious pose I frequently give them (Lopez especially). They're not holding guitars this time, though I inserted little icons in the top corners. I was originally going to do a cross of the two guitars under the text, but it didn't look right with the Gaia logo underneath. I revisited that later, though made it look better.
- Kyle howling to the aurora borealis to summon the great wolf in the sky. This one is based off my overall collectable aesthetic, as well as a short story I wrote for this site about Kyle losing and reminiscing about his father (no, Dobie is not Kyle's father). Maybe this banner is my most emotional one to date?
And here's some random miscellaneous stuff.
- The Gulliver avatar was one that I ran very briefly before changing it back to the original one at the top of this page. The inspiration came from Procol Harum's 1969 album A Salty Dog.
- I made the Tom GIF to show another user in a NH thread certain animations that can be done exclusively in HHP. Of course, I got an idea to make something cool out of what I recorded, so I mashed the clips together in Adobe Premiere and made a little training montage featuring the bantamweight fighter. There's a few parts where Tom behaves like a real cat (the speed bag lol) but I'm impressed on how it turned out.
- The Roscoe "red-eye" avatar is my personal favorite so far. It was somewhat inspired by Roscoe's Pocket Camp description. It's the existing "Dark Horse" picture I took earlier, but altered to remove all saturation, except in his eye as it's his most identifiable appearance feature. Filters were also applied to make it look like a dusty, printed photograph. Could you say that he's indeed a true "dark horse" now?
- I've made two avatars so far featuring Kyle: One is a picture I took of him at night on my actual island, holding a net. The other one is a Photopia picture of him under a borealis from the same photo session as the above signature variant. I tried for a lo-fi look for the "net" one, but I think the colors and exposure could've been better, honestly. As for the "borealis" one, I thought it looked so good without extra filters, that I originally cropped the picture into avatar size and ran with it for a bit. Later, I made some slight edits to make it stand out more color-wise to what is now seen above.
- The Dotty banner was not taken by me - this is a render by Densle, a YouTuber who has made Animal Crossing shorts using all sorts of animation software and techniques (aka not solely in Source Filmmaker) that make the shorts look just like what Nintendo themselves would make. They're really good. This image of Dotty is from a scene in Densle's short Time Travelling Designer where she appears confused in a big flower field, due to the player character time travelling over and over to get his island built up quick.
- I also got a real kick out of her having Animalese dialogue parts in this short, which made me smile big as Dotty is one of my all-time favorite villagers. The best part is when she makes a sarcastic comment to Nook at a bridge ceremony, who subsequently whacks her with a party popper to keep her thoughts to herself as he knows something isn't right with this player villager.
- Seriously, go check Densle out. He's such a talented dude who also makes original music and mashed all the shorts together in one big movie that's over an hour long, as they all tell the same continuing story.
I really like making things like these in my spare time alongside the short stories in my island journal. It's essentially a creative getaway from the hustle and bustle of life that I sometimes can't stand. Feel free to comment/compliment/suggest what to do better/etc. if you want, but I do not feel comfortable taking any requests at this time. I want to improve eventually, and maybe one day I can be like Densle and create my own GMOD/SFM shorts with Animal Crossing characters. That would be a dream to do.
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